There was an item on the BBC News website today with Wim Wenders speaking which will be of interest to many of you:photography was dead and thinks mobile phones are to blame.Note what he says about printing (and no mention spending money on ink ). Also note what he regards and being creative: photographs should be truthful, not like paintings, and should not be "turned into its opposite". The latter seem to be the fashion in club competition circles here in the UK - take a lousy photo (not creative) and then mess with it for hours in an editor to make it something else.Terry

There was an item on the BBC News website today with Wim Wenders speaking which will be of interest to many of you:photography was dead and thinks mobile phones are to blame.Note what he says about printing (and no mention spending money on ink ). Also note what he regards and being creative: photographs should be truthful, not like paintings, and should not be "turned into its opposite". The latter seem to be the fashion in club competition circles here in the UK - take a lousy photo (not creative) and then mess with it for hours in an editor to make it something else.Terry

Interesting.

I don't enter into club competitions much now, all / most judges seem to look at a photo and only comment on what could be done with it in PS.

I have nothing against PS some of the things created by it are fantastic, but it is far removed from a 'photo'

I have just been looking at some shots a friend took on a point and shoot set to auto. They were honest shots, horizons not level, note I say level, there is no such thing as a straight horizon as required by judges, blured images, all the faults but there was some good honest stuff as well.

As for mobile phones, there are some fantastic photos taken on mobiles. note I do not have a mobile phone

I don't enter into club competitions much now, all / most judges seem to look at a photo and only comment on what could be done with it in PS.

The last competition I entered (years ago) was won by a print of a shot of almost dark with the moon across the water..... except for one thing. The moon was obscuring some clouds. (covering the clouds)Second prize was won by a man who took a close up picture of a daisy with his grand daughter's face as the center pod of the flower.I stayed out of those since.Fred

I have one and I use it for making records, print occasionally and put on Flickr:-

Regarding cell phone shooting; Anecdote 1A few years ago, a group of us, would have a Thursday breakfast in the small mom & pop restaurant in town.We would bring prints and pass them around. We would critique and tease each other and with that came learning with fun.As time wound on, we lost a couple of guys to the inevitable, and some new retirees heard of us and asked to join.Each Thursday, we would bring our prints, these fellows would "flip finger" through their smart phones to show and tell.Naturally, courtesy required that we "oohed and aaahed" over his shoulder, but it really wasn't even close to printing.

My thing was printing... and each week I would bring a print or two (11 x 14) which the owner would love and would hang on the wall using scotch tape. See below!I had 19 requests for copies from random customers during the week over 19 weeks, which somehow created a separation between the phone guys and the real print guys.Why?The new guys, 5 of them, decided to "sell" their pictures on a web sits they put up. Week after week, customers would order a copy of something from my shots or others on the wall, (no advertising) and the cell phone boys sold nothing. They just got annoyed with the whole thing.By the way, my price per print was zero. I got priceless pleasure when someone asked for a copy.Can't beat printing.Cell phones have their place and use, but.... really???

Interesting comments from Terry and Jeff, and I am in complete agreement with their analysis.

Our local club competitions and the judging process seems to follow the same pattern. Easy to criticize the judging though. In my town we have a million souls in our catchment area and we need 30 judges per year for 10 competitions. The gamut runs from the good, the bad to the plain yuk. Then again the pressures of judging forces them to examine the image, form a definitive judgment, and give a score all within 60-100 seconds. Do it over and over again until they have got through the 100 or so entries. Not an easy task. But they certainly should do better.

I try to evangelize printing at our local club, and for my efforts am considered something of a nut case. I am always amazed when a person with a couple of thousand dollars of gear slung around his neck and an even larger amount in the bag on his back, whilst salivating over the latest ad greatest camera soon to be released tells me, "PRINTING IS TO EXPENSIVE

It gets better when he proudly shows his multi megapixel camera body with umpteen stops of dynamic range. Also explaining he is shooting raw to capture maximum data, AND THEN POST PROCESSES IT DOWN TO 1080 x 870 pixels in 8 bit sRGB to post on his website, or enter the local competition. Effectively discarding some 80% of the data he has paid so dearly to capture.

OK Rant off I had better stop now.

Fred's comment about meeting for coffee with frinds to exchange and view prints sounds interesting. Will try it with a few of my friends and see how it goes.

As for a term for the output of the ubiquitous phone image brigade: wow about "Crapola". Google it. An accepted term for rubbish, at least on this side of the Atlantic.

Fred and Roy – I loved both of your stories. I am so glad that I am not a professional photographer in these times. First of all, I am not good enough to be professional – but that is another story. What I see now more and more is people treating photographs as a very transient artifact – here today – gone tomorrow. Even for big events, I don’t see people keeping permanent records (i.e., prints). They spend a day or two and ooh and aaah, and geek and gawk at phone images, and then move on to the next thing. To some extent, I have to believe that for professionals, photo quality and artistry is being superseded by speed (that is quick availability) and portability.

I make lots of prints of almost everything, and like Fred, I give them away. I also make up photo booklets – like yearbooks and give to the family. I have been printing and distributing going back to my darkroom days where sometimes a days work yielded one or two usable prints, (temperature controls were not my strong suit)

Nothing to me is more satisfying than going into someone’s house and seeing one of my prints framed on the wall or on top of the piano. But increasingly, I am finding, that if I don’t get those prints to people within a few days to a week of when I took them, there is rapidly decreasing interest in them.

Nothing to me is more satisfying than going into someone’s house and seeing one of my prints framed on the wall or on top of the piano.

Another super worthy comment. Thanks, MelAnecdote 2Over the years, my wife Marilyn and I have been taking pictures..... 99% mainly for our own pleasure. Years ago, I worked in a darkroom and a commercial photo finishing lab.... but that's another story.

Like Mel, I print a lot.... At our age, we have a number of predictable doctor appointments, and after years, they all know we take pictures. So I bring them prints... 12 x 16 mostly. Years ago, one of the chemo nurses took two of my pano shots, framed them, and hung them in the large chemo room. That felt good, but last week, at an appointment at the Vascular clinic, in every little examining room, and in the long hallway to get to the examining room, were lines of Marilyn's pictures, all framed.Talk about a happy lady!!!The doctor had many of the prints I had been bringing in to him for years, framed and hung..... and last but not least, every month, I go to bring goodies for the patients and the nurses at the cancer clinic. I also bring 8 x 10s. The nurses put them in a box marked, "If you like me, take me home; FREE!"My pleasure is to come there next month and find the box empty.

That's why we love to make good prints.... and I really don't care what the ink costs.

H all,I'm pleased to see the BBC video has provoked some discussion, particularly about the joy of making prints.No-one's said very much on the video said regarding creative photographs, a point that struck a chord with me:

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Also note what he regards and being creative: photographs should be truthful, not like paintings, and should not be "turned into its opposite".

No-one's said very much on the video said regarding creative photographs, a point that struck a chord with me

I thought I voiced my opinion with these lines from an earlier post above.

"The last competition I entered (years ago) was won by a print of a shot of almost dark with the moon across the water..... except for one thing. The moon was obscuring some clouds. (covering the clouds)In case that slipped by you, there is no way the moon can cover a cloud unless you paste it there.Second prize was won by a man who took a close up picture of a daisy with his grand daughter's face as the center pod of the flower.I stayed out of those since."

How would you define creative photography?? For example, my grandchildren have these apps on their phones that lets them do a lot of weird things with photos. So they take a picture of me then turn my face into some kind of bear-like thing (my wife says she can't tell the difference), or they can put stripes on your tongue, polka dots where your eyes should be, etc. etc. Is that "creative photography?" I just want to take and print pictures that say something, or show something, or are just pleasing to look at. So Fred posted some of Marilyn's pictures. I have seen some of her work before and that is what I would like to do - consistently. So far, I have had to settle for occasionally.

So I would seriously like to see some good examples of "creative photography."

I thought I voiced my opinion with these lines from an earlier post above.

You did, but at least Mel has now commented too He said

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my grandchildren have these apps on their phones that lets them do a lot of weird things with photos

That's not much different for using fancy add-on filters for some photo editors which is often not being creative.I think creativity starts with the photographer at a scene; Wim Wenders on the BBC article implied it also finished there too.Terry